Yesterday saw staffers across Hachette Book Group’s various imprints stage a walkout to protest the acquisition of Woody Allen’s memoir, according to John Maher from Publishers Weekly… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Three days after Grand Central Publishing announced that it would publish director Woody Allen’s forthcoming memoir Apropos of Nothing, employees at the imprint and at Little, Brown, a sister imprint at Hachette Book Group, staged a walkout in protest of the acquisition. The walkouts, which have affected both the New York and Boston offices, have been joined by select HBG employees at other imprints as well, including Basic, Hachette Books, Forever, and Orbit. Allen has been accused by his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, of molesting her in 1992, when she was seven years old.
“This afternoon, Grand Central Publishing employees are walking out of the Hachette New York office in protest of the publication of Woody Allen’s memoir,” an email auto-reply from Grand Central employees’ email addresses stated on Thursday afternoon. “We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow, and survivors of sexual assault.”
Little, Brown is the publisher of Ronan Farrow, the author of the bestselling Harvey Weinstein exposé Catch and Kill and Allen’s estranged son, who has staunchly defended his sister and stood by her allegations in spite of Allen’s consistent denials. In a post on Twitter on March 3, Farrow severed his ties with the publisher.
“I was disappointed to learn that Hachette, my publisher, acquired Woody Allen’s memoir after other major publishers refused to do so and concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill—a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse,” Farrow wrote in his March 3 post.
Read full post on Publishers Weekly